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The Better Shelter emergency shelter was the big winner in the ninth Beazley Designs of the Year awards, taking home both the Architecture award and the 2017 Grand Prize. The Beazley Design Awards recognise the most original and exciting designs from around the world in six different categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Graphics, Products and Transport.

70 projects were nominated for this year’s awards, all of which can be found in a special exhibition at London’s Design Museum until 19 February 2017. Nominations for the award must promote or deliver change, capture the spirit of the year, enable accessibility and have a developed and innovative design. Each year one of the category winners is awarded the overall Grand Prize – and Better Shelter was this year’s victor.

”We are incredibly proud to be bringing home both the Beazley Designs of the Year Award for Architecture and this year’s Grand Prize – especially in a year with such intense competition,” says Johan Karlsson, initator and interim Managing Director of Better Shelter.

Other projects nominated for this year’s Architecture Award included OMA’s award-winning Prada Foundation in Milan and the recently completed New Tate Modern – and extension to the famous London museum designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

”We are above all pleased that this prize brings attention to our hard work, and as a result, the refugee situation as a whole. We accept this award with mixed emotions – while we are pleased that this kind of design is honoured, we are aware that it has been developed in response to the humanitarian needs that have arisen as the result of the refugee crisis,” says Johan Karlsson.

Better Shelter aims to improve the lives of persons displaced by conflicts and natural disasters, by developing and providing innovative housing solutions. The Better Shelter is a weatherproof temporary shelter that offers a more dignified home for displaced families as well as a cost-effective solution for humanitarian organisations. Better Shelter is a social enterprise aiming to achieve social change at scale in a financially self-sustainable way. Every dollar generated in profit is reinvested within the company or distributed to Better Shelter’s philanthropic owner, the non-profit Housing for All Foundation. Better Shelters are currently being used temporary homes and health care facilities in Ethiopia, Greece, Iraq, Macedonia and Nepal. In early 2015, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) signed a frame agreement of 30,000 shelters for its operations worldwide. Better Shelter is the result of a partnership between the IKEA Foundation, UNHCR and Better Shelter. For more information, please visit www.bettershelter.org.